Name: Norm Macdonald in Beyond the Norm: Making Of (2010) Vicon House of Moves
Uploaded: 2019-12-09T18:25:09.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Macdonald in Beyond the Norm: Making Of (2010) Vicon House of Moves' from Happy the Dog on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-12-09. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Macdonald in Beyond the Norm: Making Of (2010) Vicon House of Moves' from Happy the Dog on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-12-09. Transcript available.

No, no, no, it's good. We're just doing a sound check.
Oh, we're just doing a sound check?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wait, are we acting now?
Or we're actually just speaking now?
Well, yeah, I mean, that's what you're speaking, I'm speaking.
We're nodding out.
I got confused.
You know, obviously we're pretty excited to do this
because it's rare that House of Moves kind of goes out
and does anything that is our own.
I'm doing mocap for the House of Blues.
All right, now it's actually House of Moves.
Ah, whatever.
With House of Moves changing and becoming an animation house,
Norm, in his subtleties, I just felt was a great actor
to play this character for us.
They'd say, you need somebody to jump off a building,
I'd be the guy to go to.
When you start dealing with full body and face and synchronized audio,
and it becomes about the very subtle movements in the body,
like the lean or the push forward or the push back
that comes out in the voice.
I'm a big, tough guy.
I like doing things.
The way that his subtlety came through the character using our technology
was just very cool.
I act.
I'm the actor.
We've put a lot of effort and energy into this room.
We're surrounded by 200 Vicon T160 cameras.
We've tried to create a very comfortable room for people
to bring a project to life.
When they really want to focus on the characters
and focus on the mood and the feel.
Stage two, it's just a little bit more intimate.
The room itself, it's a sound-controlled room,
so we're capturing audio.
Scene six, take six.
Roll sound.
Motion capture, time-synchronized video.
All at the same time, face, body, hands.
This room, we really focus on the performance,
letting the actors act,
letting them drive the character with their bodies.
What the fuck?
And then it becomes our job to make sure
that that gets transferred,
moved, and animated back to the character
in the most believable way possible.
It worked!
It's just kind of about breathing life into inanimate objects.
We kind of dig that part.
Comedy!
I love when that happens!
So, yes, we have done mocap,
but the intriguing part is watching Eric Lachelle
and watching the animators
really, like, take Norm,
take Norm's base performance,
and then have a CG character
who obviously is just over the top
and really giving him life
and really say,
well, this is funny,
but this is even funnier.
With Norm,
I think we're keeping the majority of his acting
because that's who we liked
and we liked what he did,
and he's very funny.
We'll adjust head nods,
hand poses,
and some of the timing
and giving a little bit more life
to the character
because he's such a big guy
to compare to Norm.
I think a lot of people
think that once you capture the motion,
it's done,
but there's a lot that goes into
just the retargeting
and making sure posture is okay
because you're trying to match
bones and muscle
that slide and move around
to these very rigid quasi-skeletons.
And the models typically aren't one-to-one.
We are looking for good silhouettes,
good animation,
taking out penetration,
adding action,
adding overlap,
making sure the foot contacts are nice,
and we clean up eyeline.
We're taking the ultra-real
and adding just a little bit of style to it.
You're a piece of work.
You know,
make it look nice.
Damn right.
Good money in it,
I heard on the TV.
House of Moves is an animation studio.
I want to discuss the feel of a character.
You know,
does it feel right to you?
It's trying to live in that subtle layer
in between pure mocap and pure keyframe
to make sure that we mix it just correctly
to get just this beautiful little character
that we can share with people.
as you know,
we kind of get juiced about that stuff.
It's pretty exciting.
Here comes the pain.
I am the pain bringer.
That's where I got the nickname.
I bring pain.
Take that,
you Nazi bastards.
I'm here,
and I'm your nightmare.
That's not good.
I got a cramp.
Cramp.
No, no, no.
Can't we start again?
You can start again.
This is frightening me.